Our school is imposing the rosary

  • Thread starter Thread starter hansard
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
How old are the kids you work with?

Videos could help them understand what the rosary is and why it is so important, Fatima, Lourdes. There are younger versions for young kids, older versions for older ones.

I make cord rosaries, and I have had adults, teens, even children make them with me over at the blind school. The blind school isn’t even Catholic, but we live in Mexico. As a result, almost everybody here is Catholic, and they wanted to learn rosary making.

I’ve seen some parents who have made large rosaries with their children and done other things in order to spice it up.

For young children, there are coloring pages on the rosary to begin teaching them what it is so they can come to love it.

One could do a search on ways to make the rosary interesting. I once went to a place where they had a walking rosary. Each stone was a bead.

Rosary can be done…in procession, while walking.

Kids could do it with their own intentions.
 
Wow. It’s a Catholic school promoting a Catholic devotion. What’s the problem?
 
Sunbreak said:
Wow. It’s a Catholic school promoting a Catholic devotion. What’s the problem?
Click to expand...
that is it in a nutshell. A misguided idea that prayer should always be either spontaneous and formalized prayer isn’t from the heart. That notion is not true at all.
 
hansard said:
I would like (if you would be so kind) a specific answer about why repetitive prayer is any better than personal prayer.
Click to expand...
No one said that repetitive prayer is better. One way of prayer is not better than another.

Repetitive prayer helps us focus as an aid to meditation. Meditation has always been a part of Christian prayer. The rosary is a meditation on the events in the lives of Jesus and Mary. Children should learn to be quiet and to meditate. Nobody taught me how to do it. I had to drive 2 hours to a monastery and ask a monk to teach me.

In the rosary we meditate on the events in the lives of Jesus and Mary and ask for the virtues expressed in each mystery.
  • Scourging at the pillar - purity
  • Carrying the cross - patience
  • Crowning of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth - trust in Mary’s intercession
  • etc.
Jesus himself prayed repeatedly. As a faithful Jew he would have prayed the morning and evening prayer every single day, and would have started it with the “Shema Yisrael” from Deuteronomy 4:6-9. He would have said those verses over and over and over, morning and evening throughout his whole life. Jesus prayed the same prayer three times in the Garden on the night before he was to die.

-Tim-
 
I would like to briefly reflect on two points: 1) praying the rosary well; 2) forcing someone to pray.

It seems to me that the problem with the rosary is that so few people truly know how to pray the rosary. You frequently use the term “rote” in your post, but the rosary is not simply about a call-and-response that goes on. The rosary is built around its mysteries, and is about reflecting on them. So few people know how to pray these days, and there is a great learning curve when children are older (even 5 or 6). You must struggle with the rosary until you accept it, and it becomes part of you. A well-prayed rosary goes by like a conversation with a good friend — it goes on for twenty minutes, but it only feels like a moment to you. Might I recommend praying for an increase in love for Our Lady and her rosary?

I have an issue with your statement that requiring someone to pray is immoral. What is your grounds for this? It seems to fly in the face of the Catholic doctrine of obligatory Mass attendance. When we go to Mass, we are not called just to go, sit and sing. Full, active, and conscious preparation consists of prayer more than anything. If someone is singing loudly, paying attention, and giving all the responses, it’s useless unless they’re doing this prayerfully. If the Church (and indeed God himself in the Old Testament) can require someone to pray, does that mean that they are acting immorally? This is impossible: God cannot act immorally since He is perfect. Requiring someone to pray, then, cannot be immoral.
 
Sunbreak said:
Wow. It’s a Catholic school promoting a Catholic devotion. What’s the problem?
Click to expand...
This. And surely there is value in children learning a variety of prayer forms from our rich tradition. I am sure you could also teach them the Office.
 
Dear OP, in quoting scripture regarding repeating prayers I think you may have overlooked what prayer is and what is happening in prayer. When we pray, whatever form that takes it is the Trinity praying and communing within us. All forms of prayer are a grace from God. The saints and scriptures warn us about pride and the need for constant humility and simplicity before God the Lord of life and love. Therefore all prayer is pleasing to God and we must be careful that our attitude towards different forms of prayer does not cause us to be impatient or judgemental so that we believe we know how God works.

God’s ways are not our ways and he welcomes us as little children asking us to call him “Abba” or Daddy. Who ever gets tired of calling on and communing with a loved one? So when the church has a tradition that has lasted for centuries and is recommended by endless amounts of great souls in the spiritual life it is perhaps time for us to have humility and trust that the church only offers her children good food. So it is with the Rosary, apparently simple and yet with endless depth for those open to hear and listen with the heart.

Simplicity and straightforwardness should not be despised.

God bless you.
 
ClearWater said:
I like the unity and solidarity of this prayer, that an entire community or parish can pray, as one.

With individual prayer, as good as it can be. The rosary lends itself to individual and group prayer.
Click to expand...
I may be wrong, but the problem may be with people praying in cadences, that they pay more attention to keeping up or slowing down than the actual words. People, after all, do think at different speeds.

I’ve heard such criticisms from others, which also question whether this is really praying.

Individual prayer, of course, is usually done at one’s own speed, and perhaps more meaningful if done that way.
 
ProVobis said:
I may be wrong, but the problem may be with people praying in cadences, that they pay more attention to keeping up or slowing down than the actual words. People, after all, do think at different speeds.

I’ve heard such criticisms from others, which also question whether this is really praying.

Individual prayer, of course, is usually done at one’s own speed, and perhaps more meaningful if done that way.
Click to expand...
Oh, this is absolutely SO true, ProVobis! There is a small group in our parish which shouts out the rosary before Mass, and it’s torture. There’s a leader saying the Hail Mary with emphases just personal to her (e.g. The Lord IS with thee), another leader who says the Lord is with THEE, someone else saying it slower than everyone else because keeping to a speed which means it can be fitted in before Mass starts isn’t reverent to her way of thinking - well, you get the picture.

I have tried it, but it is just saying the prayers, I cannot gather my thoughts to meditate at all.
And if we are talking about a whole school being expected to say it, or even just a class, I can imagine the same. They would be taught the basic mechanics, but how could they lose themselves in meditation? It would be more likely to put them off, I’d have thought.

It would be quite different if a small group was invited to attend as a matter of devotion, perhaps round a candle and a nice icon.
 
paperwight66 said:
I have tried it, but it is just saying the prayers, I cannot gather my thoughts to meditate at all.
And if we are talking about a whole school being expected to say it, or even just a class, I can imagine the same. They would be taught the basic mechanics, but how could they lose themselves in meditation? It would be more likely to put them off, I’d have thought.
Click to expand...
You have to start somewhere. The problem with an “all or nothing” approach is that many people then will never lose themselves in meditation.

The Church does not look down on praying the Rosary simply as recital of prayers. For some, meditation isn’t their strong side. For others, they haven’t yet found the key to meditation, but yet, if children never learn how to pray the Rosary “technically” (a term to which I object, since reciting the prayers involved isn’t just a “mechanic”, as if they were useless with no meditation), they also never will find that key.

I’m afraid that sometimes, as Catholics, we use the emphasis on meditation during the Rosary to “excuse” all the Hail Marys to Protestants. We then get lost to the fact that even without meditation, there is nothing wrong about saying the prayers of the Rosary. Repetitive prayer is valued in all Apostolic, Christian traditions, though even more the further east you get. There are even studies suggesting that it may have a positive effect on the mind in helping to enter a state of meditation. There is a reason why such repetition is used in any religious tradition which values meditation, Christian as well as non-Christian.
 
TimothyH said:
No one said that repetitive prayer is better. One way of prayer is not better than another.

Repetitive prayer helps us focus as an aid to meditation. Meditation has always been a part of Christian prayer. The rosary is a meditation on the events in the lives of Jesus and Mary. Children should learn to be quiet and to meditate. Nobody taught me how to do it. I had to drive 2 hours to a monastery and ask a monk to teach me.

In the rosary we meditate on the events in the lives of Jesus and Mary and ask for the virtues expressed in each mystery.
  • Scourging at the pillar - purity
  • Carrying the cross - patience
  • Crowning of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth - trust in Mary’s intercession
  • etc.
Jesus himself prayed repeatedly. As a faithful Jew he would have prayed the morning and evening prayer every single day, and would have started it with the “Shema Yisrael” from Deuteronomy 4:6-9. He would have said those verses over and over and over, morning and evening throughout his whole life. Jesus prayed the same prayer three times in the Garden on the night before he was to die.

-Tim-
Click to expand...
Then why did Our Blessed Mother so many times, ask us to say the Rosary every day. She gave us some very powerful reasons to do soooo. God Bless Memaw
 
I think the OP is having a conflict within himself as well. Seeing the school encouraging and praying the Rosary may give him feelings of guilt because he KNOWS praying the Rosary is fruitful, but he doesn’t make it part of his life.

He despises the constant reminder that perhaps he, too, needs to be praying the Rosary, but has willingly rejected it. Must be torture to OP’s conscience.

It would probably make him feel better if there were others who also saw the Rosary as pointless. By the grace of God, these posts have only reinforced the Church’s standing of how necessary Our Blessed Mother is in the salvation of one’s soul.

Peace.

+JMJ+
 
jmj777 said:
I think the OP is having a conflict within himself as well. Seeing the school encouraging and praying the Rosary may give him feelings of guilt because he KNOWS praying the Rosary is fruitful, but he doesn’t make it part of his life.

He despises the constant reminder that perhaps he, too, needs to be praying the Rosary, but has willingly rejected it. Must be torture to OP’s conscience.

It would probably make him feel better if there were others who also saw the Rosary as pointless. By the grace of God, these posts have only reinforced the Church’s standing of how necessary Our Blessed Mother is in the salvation of one’s soul.

Peace.

+JMJ+
Click to expand...
I did not get this from the OP…What I saw was a concern about something being “imposed”.

What you write above reads an awful lot into the post considering that none of us knows this person outside a few words written on a page.

Peace
James
 
Memaw said:
Then why did Our Blessed Mother so many times, ask us to say the Rosary every day. She gave us some very powerful reasons to do soooo. God Bless Memaw
Click to expand...
I don’t understand what your “Then” refers to. What in my post are you taking issue with?

-Tim-
 
hansard said:
No, JRKH: Pledges of allegiance are to secular institutions. Requirements to learn the curriculum are secular concerns.
I am astonished that you would see these as similar in any way to sacred matters.
Click to expand...
Seems like the same principle of group recitation apply. And furthermore, there is always a risk that several or all will use the wrong words. For example, when I came to the U.S. I thought they were saying “under guard” not “under God.” No one ever corrected me. Even once in a group rosary before Mass, the priest had to come out and correct some who were saying “pray for our sinners” instead of “pray for us sinners.” I can give a few examples in singing songs by a crowd but I think you get my point.
 
TimothyH said:
I don’t understand what your “Then” refers to. What in my post are you taking issue with?

-Tim-
Click to expand...
I wasn’t taking issue with anything, just emphasizing the importance for saying the Rosary. God Bless, Memaw
 
Under the modern pretext of “being forced” or “made to”, many a traditions are being sidelined.

The children (I am sure) are not being forced-they are being taught the importance and relevance of the Holy Rosary. Repetition is how we learn and proper instruction is how we learn to appreciate.

Not enough catholics pray the Holy Rosary at all. Some pray it once a month or once a week. Very few pray it every day.

Traditional Catholic teaching is not an imposition-it is a handing down of the Holy Tradition needed to return this church and these catholics to proper worship and adoration.
 
hansard said:
Oh, I’m just a teacher at the school. I don’t want to make children take up rosary beads and count off prayers by rote. It seems meaningless to me. I suppose I have different and possibly unusual notions of what prayer should be.

Okay. One last time.

Those who disagree with me: What, exactly, is the purpose of praying the same prayer over and over again?
(I don’t want a throw-away answer like “it brings us closer to the virgin” or “it calms us in the stillness that is God”, or any other almost-meaningless platitudes).

I would like (if you would be so kind) a specific answer about why repetitive prayer is any better than personal prayer.
Click to expand...
I don’t think that what you term “repetitive prayer” is necessarily better than “personal prayer”. You do seem to have - for a Catholic teacher in a Catholic school - a decidedly Protestant and almost hostile view of the Rosary, however.

Perhaps some education on the subject is in order. Here is a link to a wonderful explanation of the history of the Rosary, the particular prayers, how it is truly biblical, etc.: catholic.com/tracts/the-rosary

Popes through the ages have often spoken of their love for the Rosary. This is an excellent link: campus.udayton.edu/mary/poperosary/popesandrosary.html

I am delighted that children in a Catholic school are being introduced to this lovely, traditional, quintessentially Catholic devotion. No one loves Mary more than Jesus, her Son; I think it goes without saying that when we offer prayers that honor (not worship, mind you) her, He is very pleased.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top